Interested In Advertising? | Contact Us Here
Warning!

 

Welcome to Clean It Up; the UK`s largest cleaning forum with over 34,000 members

 

Please login or register to post and reply to topics.      

 

Forgot your password? Click here

Adam P

  • Posts: 1448
anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« on: January 10, 2010, 09:05:43 pm »
been looking into this for the last few days and it's something i'd love to give a go. i have seen one cleaning company very similar to mine that tried it and failed, but they haven't offered any advice as to why they stopped as i guess i'm too much a competitor. i'd appreciate any advice people can give with sellingonlin.

also wondering how one would get the products at wholesale price? we'd only sell eco products so much more limited where to go, do we go directly to the companies, or is there a better way?

Adam P

  • Posts: 1448
Re: anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2010, 09:36:56 pm »
thanks for the reply but not quite what i want to do, if i'm going to be selling my own products i'd like to give a go at making them (why lose half the money and half the fun) but for now it's the bigger named products i'd like to sell.

Adam P

  • Posts: 1448
Re: anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2010, 10:07:45 pm »
method, bio-d, bentley organic, clean and natural. the list goes on but you get the idea.

dandandan

  • Posts: 424
Re: anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2010, 08:49:54 pm »
I used to have a couple of home entertainment shops,gifts gadgets,phone accessories etc.I used to go into places and write the company details off the back of the products i fancied,then e-mail the makers asking for their wholesale suppliers,good luck Dan

greenmop

  • Posts: 2
Re: anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2010, 12:04:32 pm »
Are you referring to us I wonder?! Anyway, it's no secret.. we once had an online shop.
We sourced eco friendly products from wholesalers. It was successful insofar as we got reasonably high online order numbers...
But the margins are tight on inexpensive items, such as cleaning products. A lot of effort to monitor, adminstrate, package and send orders for not much profit.
In our experience, we soon found that time was best spent in other, more profitable areas.


Adam P

  • Posts: 1448
Re: anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2010, 04:14:48 pm »
welcome to the forum. i most certainly was, i guess you may remember me asking for advice back in summer :)

good to hear your experience as we feel you're fairly similar to us. do you mind explaining where abouts did you went go to get the products at wholesale and also what you tried selling? i have contacted a few companies directly but waiting for replies still.

greenmop

  • Posts: 2
Re: anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« Reply #6 on: January 12, 2010, 05:06:49 pm »
I've been here a long time, but never post. Just thought I would on this point as it seemed to be us you were referring to.
We used to go to Infinity Foods for our wholesale products. They are very local to us, so I'm unsure of their delivery costs / distances. http://www.infinityfoodswholesale.co.uk/
With regard to products, we concentrated on selling goods that weren't readily available to consumers on supermarket shelves. It was only a couple of years ago, but most of them are now available at good prices in supermarkets, without postage costs to customers.
Focusing energy on sales of 'green' consumables to local businesses is working better for our business. But it may work for you. You'd have to find the things people want, but can't get easily, which is the crux of any online sales business I suppose.
Anyway... I'll go back to being quiet again now!

Adam P

  • Posts: 1448
Re: anyone ever tried setting up a store?
« Reply #7 on: January 12, 2010, 05:47:11 pm »
well we have a few unique ideas that we think set us apart from other options available. i hope you can appreciate that we wont be saying them here but enough that it's pushing us to go ahead with the idea.

If it fails i'm sure we'll learn a lot from it, but seeing that you have done it and it hasn't worked has set us up to try and do even more then we fierst intially had planned.

I guess with all things we need to take a lot of time to make sure we don't make amatuer mistakes.